How Do I Grow Cannabis, Let Me Count the Ways

Now that Canada has legalized recreational cannabis, one option for consumers is to buy seeds from producers and grow the plants themselves. The Cannabis Act limits four plants per household, not per person.

Thing is, there’s a catch: growing cannabis plants would only be legal, under federal law, if they were grown from legally-purchased seeds you legally. Right now, there’s no legal source of seeds. And cannabis retailers, mostly governments so far, would have to get them from licensed producers, and they haven’t made any available yet (at the time of writing this post).

One of the few options now is purchasing dried-bud cannabis from a legal source and hoping your purchase includes a rare seed.

When the time comes for you to consider growing cannabis, it can be a heady task to cultivate cannabis if this crop is new to your hands, green thumb or not. Below is a succinct breakdown of the two most popular cannabis growing methods:

Outdoor

You’ve seen the photos: fields of cannabis plants stretching their buds to the clouds. Guys wearing Hazmat-like suits tending to the crops like each is worth tens of thousands of dollars. Which they likely are.

Outdoor grows benefit from natural sunlight and a larger region to plant crops. Outdoor growers often prefer working with indica-based strains due to their heavy yields, quick maturing time and short stature.

For outdoor cultivation, farmers select areas that receive 12 hours or more of sunlight daily. In the Northern Hemisphere, growers usually plant seeds in mid-April, late May, or early June to allow plants around four to nine months of growth. Harvest usually takes place mid-September and early October. If you have the land for outdoor grows, it can often be a less expensive option compared to indoor cultivation. After all, you get natural light and ventilation, and you receive bigger yields due to the plants having plenty of room to grow.

The main drawback is that outdoor grows are subject to mother nature’s whims. Droughts, torrential downpours, bug infestations and hungry deer can devastate a crop before any bud has been harvested.

Indoor

For those preferring a controlled climate and more privacy, indoor cannabis cultivation could be an attractive option. Using artificial light, fertilizers and ventilation equipment requires a heavier capital cost compared to outdoor grows, but plants of any type can be grown faster indoors than outdoors, due to 24-hour light, and additional atmospheric CO2, amongst other factors.

A perpetual harvest is possible indoors thanks to having all that tech as the backbone of the project.

A popular branch of indoor grows is hydroponics, which is when you grow your cannabis plant in a medium reservoir of water, and provide all the nutrients to the plant directly in the water. This takes significant research to ensure you’re feeding plants with the right nutrients and following the right schedule for watering and then harvesting the buds.

Growers, using any method, should heed advice such as the need to purchase “feminized” cannabis seeds. By producing only female cannabis plants, the plants create big juicy flower buds. If you plant “regular” seeds, about half of the plants will be female and half male. Also, note that male plants are easy to spot and must be culled so that they do not pollinate females. Also, growers should watch their plants closely to see when those little hairs appear on the flowers.

“The taste and the amount of cannabinoids are determined by the colour of the trichomes, which are the little hairs,” explained gardening expert Carla Isnor of Halifax Seed. “Most people will harvest when those are about halfway amber - they'll turn from clear to kind of an amber colour - and that's when most people are going to harvest.”1

As you can see, growing cannabis is not as intimidating as it looks. To evolve into an expert green gardener, all you need to do is research, talk to the right folks and plan from the outset which method of growing is right for you.

Hemp, a non-psychoactive variety of cannabis sativa, one of the three main subtypes of the cannabis plant, has long been known to be an effective alternative to cotton clothing and nylon ropes, but it is also being harnessed for a more surprising application: acting as a vacuum cleaner for toxic substances found in soil.

Regardless of how diligent growers and commercial cannabis companies are when pushing up cannabis plants, problems can sometimes arise. The laundry list of prospective issues includes microbial offenders with nasty-sounding names like powdery mildew and botrytis cinerea, and pests that pose a range of threats: spider mites, aphids, gnats, thrips and caterpillars, to name but a handful.

Depending on the lens affixed to the discussion, cannabis can either be one of the easiest or hardest crops on the planet to cultivate. For centuries, cannabis sativa pushed up wildly, naturally, in the Himalayas and other parts of the globe, like Mongolia and Afghanistan. In recent decades, as cannabis has been domesticated and grown for both commercial and therapeutic reasons, it has also found a home in indoor and greenhouse settings.

Innovation is one of the lead characteristics that define the cannabis industry. In the context of growing cannabis, the term is more loaded than ever – connoting everything from basic adjustments to revolutionary changes in cultivation practices. Every one of these innovations is designed for many functions and one underlying goal: increasing crop yields and the quality of the cannabis being grown.

One of the most easily-overlooked aspects of the cannabis conversation is the proper sterilization of equipment. While assuredly relevant on the commercial side of the industry, sterilization is also important in a residential setting, where cannabis equipment like pipes, bongs and vaporizers are being used.

As the breadth of cultivation techniques evolve, so too has the sheer number of grow mediums increased. Where traditional mediums like soil and coco have continued to be used for medical and recreational cultivation, there are now more options than ever – aeroponics, aquaponics and deep-water culture – that breeders and growers can use to push up cannabis plants.

For the past 100 years, cannabis consumers, growers and advocates haven’t been alone in
dealing with the ramifications of strict laws governing the cannabis plant, nearly the world over.
The so-called velvet handcuffs have also hindered researchers in the space, with many advances
accomplished behind closed doors, or in laboratories where courageous researchers have pushed
the boundaries of what the scientifically permissible, or then possible.

Robust is one way to define the current breadth of research that involves the cannabis and its
chemical parts. Across the planet – namely in states and countries where medical cannabis is
permitted – scientists are becoming increasingly invested in discovering the full potential of the
cannabis plant. To date, those studies have focussed tightly on the isolating and use of particular
cannabinoids, and the prospect that isolated cannabis molecules may hold the key to any number
of conditions. With these advancements, researchers have been able to add significant scientific
knowledge, data and innovation to the medical cannabis discussion.

The future of cannabis research is rife with potential. As more countries and states move quickly to incorporate reforms to age-old drug policies, cannabis has moved out of the shadows of its former self, and now stands tall as a therapeutic agent of much interest to the scientific community.

Greenhouses have long been a fixture on country roads and highways outside of small towns, the world over. More of a visual enigma than anything, few people have the chance to learn about the importance and significance of greenhouses, a place where crops of every stripe can be cultivated year-round and help to feed the population in countries like Canada that only have short grow seasons.

For decades, cannabis has found itself a slave to stereotype characterized by anachronistic tokens of a sluggish, yet peaceful, past. These cultural artifacts – bongs, tie-dye shirts and Grateful Dead posters – have in recent years started to be replaced by a new guard, and a sophisticated new treatment of a plant that has long been held in the shadows.

If you know cannabis, you know extracts are a crucial segment of the industry. The essential oil of cannabis - a concentrate of all the active pharmaceutical ingredients in the plant - is a dynamic substance that can be turned into numerous forms for consumption. Extracts can take the shape of tinctures, transdermal patches, tablets, drink powders, suppositories and oral tablets, not to mention the commonly-used vaporizing and dabbing oils.

The sheer number of cannabis products available on the market these days is nothing short of impressive. For the better part of the 10,000 years that the plant and its derivatives have been consumed by humans for therapeutic reasons, the product offering – flowers and basic concentrates – has remained virtually static. In the last 20 years, however, there have been innovations and advancements of every shape and type, translating to one of the most creative and robust consumer markets on the planet.

The days of setting and forgetting cannabis plants are long gone. There are few breeders and growers who simply plant their crops and walk away, hoping that the latest round of yields is better than the last. In fact, the opposite is very much the truth. Contemporary cultivation techniques now number in the dozens, with a handful of styles being held up as the most effective means of maximizing the strength and volume of the yield.

Cannabis concentrates are all the rage today, thanks to the technique of extracting as many cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids as possible. For example, THC levels in concentrates can be as high as three-or-four times the amount of flowered cannabis.

The future of medical cannabis is bright. Few weeks pass these days without a new product, advancement or innovation being introduced to the budding cannabis marketplace. For patients, this wealth of choices has translated to options, both in the types of products available for cannabis therapy, but also in the way those products are consumed.

Cannabis has been cultivated and consumed for thousands of years. Until very recently, most of that use – whether for therapeutic or recreational purposes – was reserved to the shadows. As cannabis has been accepted as a viable medical treatment, so too have measures been implemented to protect patients.